Automatic Printer Driver Installation in Fedora 13 Presenter Tim - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Automatic Printer Driver Installation in Fedora 13 Presenter Tim Waugh Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat 1 Tim Waugh

Automatic Printer Driver Installation in Fedora 13 ● The idea ● Current status ● Driver requirements ● Limitations 2 Tim Waugh

The idea ● PackageKit used to automatically install resources ● Special tags added to packages at build time ● Run-time hooks for installing packages: ● Codecs (gstreamer) https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/GStreamer_dependencies_in_RPM ● Fonts (GTK+) ● MIME type handlers (nautilus) https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/AutoFontsAndMimeInstaller ● Why not printer drivers? 3 Tim Waugh

The idea ● Offer to install all drivers which declare support ● Nothing installed without user interaction ● system-config-printer then chooses “best” driver from those installed (as normal) 4 Tim Waugh

The idea ● Drivers declare the IEEE 1284 Device IDs they expect using existing mechanisms ● Add PackageKit queries: ● Direct: add to existing udev hook ● Network: add to system-config-printer before driver search 5 Tim Waugh

What about Jockey? ● Jockey: infrastructure for providing 3 rd party drivers for system hardware ● Query is entirely OpenPrinting-based (packages not tagged with IEEE 1284 Device IDs) ● Wanted a more “PackageKit”-y solution ● Applications can formulate their own queries ● what packages provide a driver for this model? ● which ones are installed? which have free licenses? ● 3 rd party repositories configured “as normal” 6 Tim Waugh

Current status ● RPM support done and “provides” script written ● PackageKit ● API adjusted ( POSTSCRIPTDRIVER 'provides' enum) ● yum backend updated ● gnome-packagekit, kpackagekit ● API adjusted ( InstallPrinterDrivers method) ● system-config-printer (incl udev hook) updated ● Driver packages adjusted where necessary and rebuilt 7 Tim Waugh

Driver Requirements ● Packaging ● Build requires pycups, cups ● Add IEEE 1284 Device ID tags for each device ● PPD files *1284DeviceID: “MFG: … ;MDL: … ;” ● Driver information files (CUPS DDK .drv) Attribute “1284DeviceID” “” “MFG: … ;MDL: … ;” ● PPD driver programs (dynamically generated) Fill in 5 th field in list output – see cups-driverd(8) Must execute in build root! 8 Tim Waugh

Driver Adjustments Required Foomatic PPD files | PPD driver program ● Database (including PPDs) in foomatic-db source pkg ● Device ID tags picked up from PPD files (but few) ● Filters/RIP/driver program in foomatic source package ● Perl include path wrong for build root ● Build requires foomatic – slightly hacky ● Build requires foomatic-db ● Device ID tags picked up from driver program 9 Tim Waugh

Driver Adjustments Required HPLIP PPD files | Driver information file IEEE 1284 Device IDs already listed: ● some PPD files ● hpcups.drv file ...but largely incorrect ● hpcups.drv corrected from foomatic data 10 Tim Waugh

Driver Adjustments Required Gutenprint PPD driver program ● CUPS driver program reads XML files ● Did not declare IEEE 1284 Device IDs ● Adjusted to use $DISTDIR if set ● XML adjusted to store Device ID for each model ● Populated from foomatic data 11 Tim Waugh

Limitations / Future Directions ● Only implemented for: ● RPM (2 lines in PackageKit + provides script) ● Gnome and KDE ( InstallPrinterDrivers D-Bus method in org.freedesktop.PackageKit.Modify interface) ● Will not install CUPS (or start service) ● Will not discover generic drivers ● CMD-based matching? *1284DeviceID: “CMD:PCL;” ● Inaccurate IEEE 1284 Device IDs in drivers 12 Tim Waugh

Limitations / Future Directions ● Not all printers provide Device IDs on all interfaces ● DNS-SD, SNMP, USB, etc ● Foomatic drivers can't generally be installed this way ● Binaries referenced by XML in foomatic-db ● e.g. min12xxw ● foomatic-kitload (XML provided by driver) ● e.g. gutenprint-foomatic ● Newer drivers should provide driver information files instead Not currently foomatic-db dependencies but could be 13 Tim Waugh

Thanks ● Questions? 14 Tim Waugh